Victor Brauner was a Romanian Surrealist painter and
sculptor, and one of the most important members of the Romanian
avant-garde. Born on June 15, 1903 in Piatra Neamt, Romania, he studied
at the National School of Fine Arts in Bucharest from 1916 to 1918. Soon
after, he began painting landscapes and, as he put it, went through all
the "Dadaist, Abstractionist, Expressionist" idioms. In 1930, he moved
to Paris where he befriended Constantin Brancusi, Yves Tanguy, and Alberto Giacometti; the latter two lived in the same building as Brauner on Moulin Vert Street. His best-known painting, Self-portrait with enucleated eye, was completed in 1931, and coincidentally, seven years later he lost his left eye in a violent argument between Oscar Domínguez and Esteban Francés.
In 1966, he was chosen to represent France at the Venice Biennale, and
he died that same year on March 12, 1966 in Paris, France. The artist is
buried in the famed Montmartre cemetery, where his epitaph reads: “Painting is life, the real life, my life.” artnet.com